Many professional piano players are not good sight-readers. They just don’t need to be.

Successful
piano players know the key to improvisation is developing the
connection between the brain and hands.

Once you develop that brain/hand connection your creativity can kick in and use you musical vocabulary that has already been learned and stored as muscle memory.

You can add to your musical vocabulary by working regularly on two things, the scales from which the chords of a tune
are derived, and knowing effective chord voicings that sound good.

Although the more comfortable you get with piano exercises (chords and scales) the more creative freedom you will feel, you don't have to wait to begin to improvise on piano. I recommend you start right now!

The Benefits of Improvisation:

Scientists have discovered by monitoring the brains of individuals who were involved in the creative process of generating melodies and rhythms that several brain regions became highly activated especially one responsible for self expression.

Improvising also deactivated areas of the brain responsible for self -monitoring and area that would cause you to be distracted by external and irrelevant stimuli.

This means that the activity of improvisation is accompanied by a mental
state of high, meditative concentration, where internal and external
supervising processes are partly muted, permitting musical self
expression.

Start Now!

Scientific investigation shows, that – independent of the age of the
player – the brain begins to rewire itself after only a few weeks of improvisation practice at the piano.

And apart from this, there is a growing
number of studies showing music making has a positive effect on the
brain’s activities as it ages.

With a daily practice of free and creative piano playing, you could:

1. Create moments of relaxation, joy, and satisfaction,

2. Forget the stress of your work, and maybe even be more creative in your job, and

3. Train your creativity and start freely playing music with your friends.

With the proper technique for fingering chord and scale patterns,
improvisation is actually much simpler you may think.

Whether you wish to play a jazz solo, a New Age composition, or a
variation on a popular song melody or rock tune, a
piano improvisation is merely a series of notes drawn from a musical
scale that is already predetermined by the chords of the tune.

Additional Resources.

For more help woth improvisation on the piano you may want to check out the lessons below and check back often as new helpful lessons are added regularly.

The pentatonic scale.

Learn about this widely used improvisation scale and add a new dimension to you playing by clicking the link below

After checking out dozens of home study courses that teach you to play by ear and focus on chord progressions I am convinced that the folks at Hear and Play have the best, most well rounded program available for just about all styles of music from Gospel to Jazz. Read my review or visit Hear and Play for more information.

Contact me

If you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas for future lessons feel free to Contact Me.